INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS - iSCSI STORAGE
Consolidation of storage is now a priority for all medium to large organizations as server numbers grow and demand for greater storage often means servers outgrow their capacity and need to be replaced.
It is often a fact that if the free space on all servers in an organization could be consolidated the resulting free space could cope with growth demands. Installation of a Storage Area Network (SAN) allows that consolidation to take place.
We have known for several years, that the Fibre Channel interface is the ‘Industry Standard’ for Storage Area Networks. However, issues of high costs and difficulties accessing remote devices have often raised the question of ‘is there a better solution?’
Well now there is and it is often referred to as iSCSI, the Internet Small Computer System Interface. Seen as the revolutionary alternative to the Fiber Channel SAN, here are some of the reasons why iSCSI is being embraced:
- iSCSI provides the block-level access and storage I/O intelligence of SCSI, whilst transforming your SCSI storage devices from server-attached to network-attached. This allows for better management, partitioning and allocation to both servers and applications and is therefore much more efficient.
- iSCSI lets you connect a limitless number of storage devices to a SAN, instead of the device limits imposed by SCSI
- Instead of expensive proprietary Fiber Channel (FC) switches and Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs), iSCSI uses industry standard Gigabit components.
- Less training is required as iSCSI is based on the familiar technologies of Ethernet, SCSI and TCP/IP.
- Virtualized storage architectures such as that used by EqualLogic allow additional storage arrays to be added without downtime and without the constraints of the fixed chassis and back planes of traditional FC SAN.
The Nviron Solution
Get the facts! Take advantage of Nviron’s iSCSI Storage Review to assess your storage requirements and provide the solution to your consolidation project. Our comprehensive report identifies the optimum iSCSI storage for your business.
Nviron has added two iSCSI solutions to its Data Centre Advantage framework to meet the differing requirements of Tier 1 and Tier 2 storage:
Tier 1 - Our Business-Critical storage solution is delivered by EqualLogic, a market leader in the iSCSI storage sector. With the revolutionary PS series of automated iSCSI SANs providing storage benefiting from data management simplicity and enterprise-class availability, Nviron delivers a much more affordable solution when compared to an equivalent FC SAN at FC SAN levels of performance and reliability.
Tier 2 – If your requirement is Business-Standard storage, then our proven iSCSI solution powered by Microsoft Storage Server 2003 is the logical choice. In use today with BT and other Telco’s, Nviron supplies storage units on an OEM basis from a UK based manufacturer specialising in high availability voice and video recording infrastructure where reliability is paramount. With RAID6 support the unit is tolerant to the loss of two units in a RAID array.
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